After a race which promised so much, and delivered just one point - and that the result of penalties handed to rivals - Ferrari was left seething following the European GP.

The main cause of the team's anger centres around the safety car period, with the team angry that its chances of a successful result were compromised by the timing of the deployment of the safety car and Fernando Alonso angry that Lewis Hamilton wasn't punished harder for overtaking the car when it was deployed.

"The outcome of this Grand Prix leaves us with a very bitter taste," said team boss Stefano Domenicali. "We had everything we needed to clinch a good result and we have ended up with a handful of points which is even less than we brought home from our worst race, a month ago in Turkey.

"It is a real shame because over this weekend we have shown that we have made a good step forward in terms of performance and the opening stage of the race looked promising. Then came the unfortunate blow linked to the safety car period, which arrived at the very worst moment for us in that both our cars had just gone past the pit lane entry and therefore were forced to do a full lap behind the Safety Car. And that definitely compromised our race.

"I think that the incidents linked to the neutralisation put some questions on the table regarding how to manage situations like this and the eventual penalties linked to them. We have to ensure that our sport remains credible in the eyes of those involved and those who follow it, at the track and in front of their TV screens."

Ferrari vice-president, Piero Ferrari, was equally angry. "I am incredulous and bitter," he told the team's website, "not just for Ferrari, but for the sport as a whole, as this is not the sort of thing one expects from professionals.

"For a long time now, I have also followed races in championships in the United States, where the appearance of the Safety Car is a frequent occurrence, but I have never seen anything similar to what happened today at the Valencia circuit. If it raises some doubts over the actions that led to a false race, to me that would seem more than reasonable."

According to the Italian team, even race fans found the incident scandalous.

"A scandal, that's the opinion of so many fans and experts involved in the sport, who are all in agreement," read an article on the team's website. "There is no other way to describe what happened during the European Grand Prix. The way the race and the incidents during it were managed raise doubts that could see Formula 1 lose some credibility again, as it was seen around the world."

Most angry however, was Fernando Alonso, ironic considering how he benefited from a perfectly timed safety car period just two years ago in Singapore.

"The race was ruined by the safety car and everything that followed on from that," he said. "I am disappointed most of all for the thousands of spectators who were here today and saw how the situation was handled.

"I am very bitter about what happened today," he continued. "I was in third place, a metre behind Hamilton at the moment the safety car came out on track and, at the chequered flag, he was second and I was ninth, even though we had made the same choice of strategy. The penalty he was given came when it could no longer have any real influence on his finishing position. From then on, my race was compromised. I was always in traffic and I did not get the performance I had expected from the hard tyres: this also explains the difficulty I had in passing first Sutil and then Buemi.

"This is definitely a bad result for us, but I still hang onto the idea that we will do the maths at the end, in Abu Dhabi: incidents we have no control over will be made up for. We must continue to work and push on the car development front to try and be the quickest on the track."